


the incision

by wtfmulder



Series: pocket guts [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s06e18 Milagro, F/M, Post-Episode: s06e12 One Son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-04-05 03:27:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14035188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: Sequel to Pocket Guts, second part of a 3 part series.S6. Mulder and Scully have a lot of work to do on their relationship before it even starts.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for following along even during the hiatus. There will be one final part to this series, Cauterize, which will be one veeeeeery long piece. Look out for it!

On a Saturday morning, Fox Mulder likes to sleep in as much as he can. He never gets very far, considering it a win when the sun wakes him up and not his own jackass internal clock. The rest of the day after that is spent waiting for it to be Sunday. On Sunday, he waits for it to be Monday.

But he’s got a sweet deal with this new bed of his, and he hadn’t even lited it off a curb. He’s been getting more sleep. A ton of sleep. The best sleep he’s ever had. Life is so much easier to deal with when he’s not living it.

He recognizes the signs of a slow, deep depression settling in. Shit’s been steadily descending since the fire cooled at El Rico airbase, but it goes further than that, he thinks – all the way back to the ice. There’s a timer set for the extinction of the human race, and it takes every shred of his energy just to knock it back a few seconds. How long can they keep slapping the snooze button on armageddon? 

How long can he keep trying to solve problems that are too big for him?

Maladaptive daydreaming takes him there. Warm happy thoughts. No guilt. Nothing to fumble an apology for. Hit the snooze button, drag Scully under the covers. Let the end of the world happen while they finally get some fucking sleep. If the sky were falling he could maybe bring himself to hold her, and she could maybe bring herself to let him.

The phone wakes him on a Saturday morning. Scully’s been working late or working early, he can never tell, and when it’s not absolutely vital it’s been increasingly harder to reach her.

She tells him she’s coming over with autopsy results. He rubs his fist over his mouth and rolls over, grunting, to catch the time on his digital clock: eight in the morning. Not bad, not bad at all.

There’s only time to pull on some jeans and a t-shirt and to stick a toothbrush in his mouth before she arrives, showered, chipper, all suited up.

She is – she seems content. Talkative. Asking questions about his reclusive neighbor that he brushes off;  the guy’s a creep, but a quiet one with no discernible odor, and there’s nothing more to say. Her good mood puts him off balance. He swallows his toothpaste, tosses the toothbrush on the coffee table and takes a swig of his coffee. Eugh. It’s disgusting, but he drinks until all the paste dissolves from his tongue.

Flipping through the results, he thinks about the inherent brutality of a cleanly sliced wound. That sort of delicacy and precision hinted at a lot of things – a medical background, thoughtful premeditation, and the killer’s unmitigated control over their actions.

But where the hell is the wound?

What is going on here?

Her dropping by his apartment, he’d realized as soon as he let her in, is as close to a truce as they are going to get. She is willfully inhabiting his space and fighting back when he chooses to drop the bullshit and say exactly how he feels; what other explanation can she possibly provide, if not psychic surgery? His conciliatory approach as of the last few months only succeeded in pissing her off even more. Everything he does succeeds in pissing her off –  except, apparently, arguing against her every word.

It’s a toss-up. No one ever has just one feeling. Why the hell can’t you just accept my theory for once? I missed this so much I could weep, Scully.

He misses her at the crime scene, too. Seven in the morning, a gray, chilly traipse through the Virginia forest, a young lover who’d had his heart ripped out. He can’t explain anything to anyone, and he doesn’t have his trusty skeptic around to pacify the local P.D. as he boldly proclaims what he knows to be extreme alternative medicine. But she’s in his office when he calls. He doesn’t think about the possibility of her sitting in his chair, or spreading out her work on the side table like she used to.

There’s nothing for him to do at the crime scene, he double checks, so he follows her lead to the basement. It’s a quick drive back, and when she tells him about the charm, he deduces, just as quickly, that it’s nothing, stomping down his annoyance at her sudden urge to play profiler. A killer who doesn’t dare leave a scratch on his victim wouldn’t suddenly find it in himself to taunt the guy trying to catch his ass.

“A secret admirer,” he throws out, and he wants it to be flirty, craves that natural rapport, that playfulness, any sign at all that sanity has been restored to their partnership. But for a moment he believes himself. Someone’s hitting on Scully. This is worst possible time for that to be happening. The joke falls flat. Neither of them find it funny.

But there’s work to be done, anyway. “You’ve got a 9:00 a.m. with the D.C. medical examiner. He’s going to let you autopsy the latest victim.” He slips the envelope with the charm out of her hand. By the time he sees her face, takes note of her supreme offense, it’s too late. All of her walls are back up.

“Thank you for making my schedule, but I think I’m going to have to be late for that appointment.”

She shows up at the bay at 10:05. He feels, ridiculously, depressingly stood up. And dead wrong, to boot, because the more he thinks about it, the more likely it is that the charm has everything to do with the murders. He screwed up. Was there ever a second chance he didn’t obliterate?

And when she arrives, so solemn, so disappointed with herself and the turn of events, bowling him over with everything she’s learned about his fucking stalker, hermit neighbor, his blood pressure rises, and he clenches his fists at his sides.

She’s disturbed, visibly shaken, and… he swallows the huge lump forming in his throat. He doesn’t reach out to comfort her. His gut is a cauldron of bad feelings. He’s afraid for her, and of her, for a reason he can’t pinpoint. There’s something off about her reaction to all of this. Maybe it’s how quickly she dismissed her own theory.

Ever since he’d told her he loved her – for real, this time, with all of the intent and the hope and the despair he knew would come with that declaration – every second he’s spent with her is paired with the anxiety of accidental indecent exposure. Trapped with his dick out and his heart on his sleeve under her scrutinizing, unforgiving gaze, making every wrong move possible. The fucking audacity of this guy to believe he knows the first thing about Dana Scully.

He’s trying it out her way now, and by that he means the scientific method, when all he wants to do is shake her until she gives in.Keeping Scully with him is becoming a hard, unforgiving science, one that involves a lot of experimenting, a careful tweaking of methodology. He never knows what she is feeling now, except that it some sort of  _bad_. Oh, that is humbling. That could do his knees in. Anyone might say what they want about the carelessness with which he treats most people, but he has never wanted to hurt anyone. Well, hurt anyone who hadn’t deserved it. Well, he has never, ever wanted to hurt Scully. 

It had not come to him in a single epiphany, that he loves her; it had been a slew of them, like getting the crapped kicked out him at least once a year. A right-on-schedule, beg-for-his-life ass beating that temporarily shoves him to his knees, and he’s been humbled repeatedly by the volatility of his feelings and the ineludible nature of them.

They are not soley reserved for his visits to her hospital bed. He’s almost died a thousand times, and his final thoughts are not always of her. That’s not his fault. Sometimes you crave a Big Mac when you’re lipping the barrel of someone else’s gun and there is nothing you can do about that. He’s loved her nearly dead and he’s loved her undeniably alive, and he’s loved her in that listless space in between – where they have both suffered, where they have both been damaged irreparably. And he’s failed  her, irreparably, or so he’s finally beginning to believe. 

He knows what it looks like. He’s not an idiot.

It’s not that he needs to lose her to love her.

It’s just that it never seemed worth bringing up until recently.

His neighbor is the killer. The rest of his night will consist of mail fraud and a little careful surveillance. If by some inconceivable circumstance he is wrong – and he is not – he can at least gather enough information on the guy to make him back the hell off.

Having a plan doesn’t make him feel any better. The air is swollen and sick with tension, and eventually something’s going to snap. 

He is losing Scully.  
  
It’s a recent development, this occasional belief he might be worthy of some companionship. That someone might want to be his goddamned friend. He’s not sure when it started –

_I wouldn’t put my career on the line for anyone but you, Mulder –_

_I wouldn’t change a day –_

– but somewhere along the line he grew some expectations. Some hopes. More than friendship. More than  _love_. Need. A painful, soul-consuming  _need_.

Christ.

He is losing Scully.

—————

She often does her best work on autopilot, her scalpel sinking into bloated flesh like one might sink into a daydream. Her findings are unambiguous; the method of killing an exact match for the method of their killer. She dictates it all into her recorder and works all of the details out of body until there’s nothing else to find, all the while she is thinking of events of the day. Dismissal, derision, delusion. Ridding herself of her scrubs and latex gloves, her eyes catch on her jacket hanging from the coat stand. Her fingers slip into her pocket and pull out the milagro.

Holding it, she’s filled with the uncontrollable urge to watch her back, and unease floods her to her core. She’s flattered, and decently ashamed of that. She remembers her admirer’s unceasing stare, how his gaze had felt like a physical touch. But she is sickened, too. She had asked to be heard, she had asked for attention to be laid upon her, to be understood and to be valued, but not by some stranger, and certainly not by someone who never even bothered to say hello before he got to know her.

Images unbidden float into her mind, her nerves ablaze with phantom sensation. The writer’s hand gliding over her body, caressing and squeezing her, the bristle and scratch of his facial hair against her sensitive skin.

They make her want to throw up.

But it is nice to not think about Mulder for awhile. A miracle, really.


	2. Chapter 2

They’ve been watched for so long now, it doesn’t often occur to her to fear surveillance. The personal nature of Phillip Padgett’s stalking – and that is what he’s been doing – gives rise to that old adrenaline. Check the back of your car before you start it, walk only in well lit areas, do not go out alone after midnight, change up your route every now and then so you’re harder to follow. She’s older than she was in those college seminars. She’s packing heat. The damage she can deliver to Padgett in a single blow would ruin the rest of his life – and yet… **  
**

Mulder offers to pick up the autopsy results from her apartment so she doesn’t have to show up at Hegel Place, but she brushes him off. This is about power, and there is no way in hell she’d let Padgett hold that over her. She doesn’t even hold her breath when she passes his door, getting ready to knock on Mulder’s. But she does look back, a curious, uneasy glance, when the click of the typewriter vibrates through the wood. The milagro burns a hole in her pocket and a series of questions in her mind. She fishes it out, swivels on her heel, and knocks on the wrong door.

Why, he asks, when she holds the milagro out to him.  _Why?_ There’s a laugh in the question, she registers it as derisive. But through all of it, there’s something oddly familiar about him, something comforting. The sallow, sunken face, the greasy curls, the smile in his eyes… Phillip Padgett is obsessive. He is the obsessive type.

She’s only ever known obsessive men. Is it narcissism, then, that brings her into his apartment? Her father was drawn to the sea, her partner is drawn to the sky. Jack had wanted glory, Daniel had wanted admiration. Hers, to be exact. Philip Padgett…

Phillip Padgett wants  _her_.

He has no furniture, nor does he have food – she’s assuming he lives off of takeout and the drive-thru, and how could she judge him? – but he has coffee. It’s dark outside and she’s had a long day. There’s an argument waiting for her at 42 Hegel Place, and there’s a sad Lean Cuisine all coated in freezer burn waiting for her at home. Loneliness is a choice, but a fat load of good it’s been doing for her lately. It doesn’t sit well with her, that this stranger knows everything about her and yet she knows nothing of him.

But for what little she’s able to figure out, she almost wishes she never bothered. It dawns on her, when Philip reveals how the depth of his obsession led him to renting this apartment, that he is a sick, unstable man. It intrigues the investigator inside of her. She’s feeling punchy. If this is about power, let him think he has it. She’ll read his frighteningly long manuscript, and she’ll be glad to prove him wrong.

Surprise surprise: the writer has a bed, and a straight view of a brick wall. Her stomach crawls into her throat, and the backs of her knees pull tight like they’re trying to physically drag her out of the room.

“I’m very uncomfortable with this,” she tells him. When he sidesteps her to grab a lightbulb for the dead lamp, she picks up the scent of unwashed skin, coffee and typewriter ribbon and thinks she’s going to be sick. His body so close to her is undeniably foreign. She reads part of his manuscript in the relative dark, aware of his attentive presence the whole way through. And for the first time in what hurts her to admit is years, she realizes she has actually, finally been seen.

***

He reads the writer’s words over and over again like a self-flagellating catholic, and at least it clears up one thing for him: this fucker does not know Scully, will never know Scully, will hopefully be behind bars long enough he’ll never even have the chance to meet someone that’s kind of like Scully. The guy’s not even that great of a writer. He’s a piece of shit hack who jerks off to his own goddamn novel before going to sleep.

The dirty parts make him blush, and sadly they make him nearly come in his pants. He loves bad pornography. The more terribly written, the better. The Scully he reads about is not the Scully he knows, but he feels like he’s violating her privacy all the same.

Her words from earlier haunt him; she believes Padgett really gets her. He goes back and forth, back and forth, whipping pages out of place and striking through and underlining anything that might be relevant. To the case, to this fucked up situation. How is he doing it? Who is Dr. Ken Naciomento? How did they meet, and what the hell is going on with Scully? And despite his best judgment, he finds himself searching for more than just evidence, but for an answer to something he must have missed, a vital piece of Dana Scully he’s been dreadfully reckless with.

Though it hurts him, and though he quickly grows tired of the same scene playing over and over in his head, the most important thing to him is Scully’s safety and well-being. A knot of self-doubt begins to loosen, little by little, as it becomes natural for him again to put her first and to actively think about what she needs from him. It has been so long, and he is so fucking stupid. The only saving grace of Padgett’s work is that his words about Scully are sweet, and kind, and Mulder agrees with a lot of them even though the man is a loser.

That just makes him feel worse. It’s too easy to forget that kindness goes a long way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had some questions about if Diana Fowley is gonna make an appearance -- not really. Just don't want to get your hopes up.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s rare she loses her place when she reads, or that she has to go back and start all over again. But as Padgett’s words spill out on the page in front of her, they run together as if they’d been handwritten and smeared. A young cop delivers her a paper cup of ice cold water. She can barely manage to take a sip, make her tongue move, her throat flex to force it down. She forces her way through it because it is evidence, and because it is the key to proving Phillip Padgett has not committed murder.

There are different ways to be unstable, she thinks. She stands by his innocence, although the manuscript unsettles her more deeply than anything she’s come across in the line of duty. She had been taken, taunted, bound, and beaten; she’s had a future taken from her, a sister, a daughter. But this is altogether a different feeling. She has never before been so deep in the minds of her stalkers and abusers, nor has she ever found herself empathizing with them.

Phillip Padgett is lonely, crazy, and enslaved to a passion that has not yet gotten him anywhere in life. She can tell by his words that his sparse decorating and lack of social commitments do not necessarily mean he is artless, nor that he cannot appreciate beauty. In fact, that seems to be all he does. It’s in everything he writes, from the way he describes the trees in a cemetery to the pages he devotes to the grotesque subtleties of navigating a crime scene. He writes about a corpse the way she sees it; he writes about her the way she wants to see herself.

She does not want to believe that another man who has grown to like her wants to hurt her, too.

When she spreads his statement out before her, the one that leads her and Mulder over to the cemetery, she’s sure for a minute he did it. But then – no. He couldn’t have.

***

Mulder must hate her. That’s what this has to be. When he grabs her by the shoulders and reverses their position, she has half a mind to lift up her knee and jam his testicles right up through his skull.

“What are you doing?” It throws her off. She thinks she might cry but for the life of her she doesn’t know why. The salt burns her eyes but she does not let them fall – that would be ridiculous.

“Well, you’re about to argue my usual side, aren’t you?”

Goddamnit, goddamnit, she just can’t win. Of course this can’t be about the case itself, the bare-bones facts as they have been laid out before them. It has to be about  _them_. More specifically, it has to be about her and how everything she thinks, feels and investigates is wrong. Even in a scenario like this, where she is forced to look outside the means of conventional knowledge in order to draw a conclusion – thereby leveling with him, thereby giving support to his entire way of thinking – he just can’t make himself agree with her. Agree with her, believe her, trust her. And he says _he loves her?_

How fucking dare he?

When they open Phillip Padgett’s cell and hand him his manuscript, Scully pleads with him in her head to hear her. Go, this is a trick. He must be able to hear her, he  _must_ – how else would he know what he knows? How else would he know her so well?

Then he says it, reaches in too deep.  _Agent Scully is already in love_. Like having a hand reach under your skin and wrap around the heart you’ve kept so well protected…

***

Mulder has to lift her up; otherwise he’s going to press her into the ground, crush her to death with his relief. Oh, I am so happy to see you. Her need paralyzes him, and her panting sobs reverberate through his chest like his own heartbeat. Not for the first time in life, he is overcome and overwhelmed. She is the best thing he’s ever seen, touched, held, and she has always been there, alive and real and in love with him, she loves him, she loves him, she’s okay. They’ll clean the blood off, they’ll close the case, and he will never, ever, ever – ever – oh, Scully. Oh Scully.

“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” he murmurs, tugging her all the way into his lap. “We don’t know–”

“No!” She wheezes, trying to burrow into his body. “No no no no–”

“Okay, Scully, okay.” He leans back and back, making more room to fit her dead weight. She holds onto him like there’s anywhere she could fall. He does manage to convince her to take her jacket off and unbutton her blouse, just so he can fit his palm over the left side of her chest, her bra sticky and dark with her drying blood. He monitors her heartbeat, rocking her gently in his lap, and waits until the convulsions subside to carry her off into the bathroom and proceed to draw a bath.

He is not uncertain, for a change, of what she is thinking. She‘s afraid.


	4. Chapter 4

Scully comes away from the hospital a changed woman, different from the one he held in his arms, but not the same as she was before, either. He reminds her of a criminal who’s been caught and sentenced, and is resigned to the punishment. She’s obviously not ashamed of her involvement with Padgett, however far it reached, but she isn’t defensive. She doesn’t hide from him like he expected; she even lets him drive her home. She’s in the passenger seat, but he feels her weight in his arms and the knives of her nails digging into his neck.

He parallel parks in front of her building, waiting for either her invitation or her rebuke. The brightly painted buildings and cobblestone sidewalks are an odd backsplash to the gray they sit with in the car. Windchimes rustle at the neighboring townhouse, and the chatter of students and families as they jog past the car and chat in their doorways catches snippets of his attention as he thinks of what he wants to say. If he should say anything. He collected her statement after she’d been checked over. Later he’ll transcribe the tape, pausing and rewinding as her voice soldiers on steady, and he’ll be reminded of how difficult it is to shake Dana Scully. 

“Do you want me to come inside?” He asks, surprised at himself. It’s more like him to follow her up without asking or simply speed off. She shakes her head.

“No, I’ll be fine.” She stares out the window, narrowing her eyes at the door of her complex. Padgett had wanted to move in here. Soriority girls would have quieted their voices whenever they saw him on the street, remaining silent until the danger passed. He’s met Scully’s landlord; a friendly guy, but pushy, often inviting himself in for repairs and evening chitchat. Padgett would’ve hated him.

“Scully…” he tries, not wanting to offend her with whatever he chooses to say. The looming threat of her continued silent treatment, the sight of her back as she shuts him out of her office and ignores him for the rest of the day, slows his thoughts. The question he wants to ask _, Why,_  is the most important of them all, but the one most likely to set her off. “You really thought he knew you?” he decides on. The tone isn’t great, but it could be worse, and at least it doesn’t make her storm off.

She huffs a laugh, shaking her head. “Yeah, Mulder. I thought he did.”

“But…” too fast. Slow it down. Think before you speak.

“It’s not your place to criticize him. Not when you never listen to me.”

His fingers clench the steering wheel, bones cracking with the grip. “I know I’m a jerk, Scully, but at least I never murdered anybody.”

“He was right, you know,” she says, not rising to the bait. “About a lot of things. About too many things.”

His throat tightens, a sweat breaking out in his fists and underneath his collar. None of the words that Padgett wrote came to him as much of a surprise, but they’d been uncomfortable to read. They were things he might have thought himself, but he’d been careful to push away. Now he’s been trying to get back in, figure out what she’s thinking. He’s not even sure if he ever explained to her why he didn’t want to know her. What he’s thinking.

“I do love you–” she says as he says, “Diana–” and then Scully says “It’s not  _about_ Diana.”

“Did you just say you – “ and then his chest fills with air and he fights the urge to yell, “What do you mean it’s not about Diana?” He doesn’t want to even say her name. It feels forbidden, like it will be followed with Scully’s fist in his gut. Maybe Padgett was onto something with his fucked up obsessive scribbling. Maybe if he writes this all down he can sort it out and figure out what’s going on. His confusion makes him dizzy, angry. “I told you… what happened between us, I tried to open up, and  _you move out of our office_. You don’t even let me explain.”

“I can’t put it into words how shitty you’ve made me feel. About us. About the work. About the partnership.” It comes out of her like rushing water, chest deflating with the force. “About _myself,_  Mulder. And I might as well tell you now, because I can’t run from it anymore. The last thing I had was my privacy, but it’s all out there now because of this case and  _that book_. All of this and _the color of underwear_ I prefer, because this man was stalking me and probably watching me undress.”

“I’ve been a bad partner, Scully. I know that. But it was never about you. I never meant to make you feel bad about yourself.”

“You tell me I make you a whole person, that you need me. Then you take it back.” She points out these things like running through a list of data, stone-faced and calculated, as he breaks down beside her and shakes his head, no, no, you’ve got it wrong. “No, Mulder. I repeated your own words back to you, and you negated them. Then–” she laughs, unbuckling her seatbelt to give herself more room to rant. “Then I get you your proof. I show you that I’m on your side. That I’ve always  _been_ on your side. But that’s still not enough. You spend this whole year running to her, going behind my back to chase your fucking aliens without keeping me in the loop. And this whole time, while I’m stewing in my resentment towards you, I am blaming myself. Yes,” she hisses when he tries to interject. “I blame  _myself._  Because it’s my fault we don’t have the X-Files.

“Isn’t it?” He shakes his head. “No. That’s exactly how you feel and how you’ve felt this entire time. So, I do whatever I can to fix my mistake. I put my career on the line multiple times to save you, to chase unauthorized leads with you into the middle of the desert. I’m working my ass off doing work I hate and making excuses for you so we don’t further disparage ourselves in the eyes of our superiors. And you push me away.” Cold steels cracks into fat, warm tears.

“Then tell me what I can do to fix it, goddamnit!” He beat the wheel with his fists, tendons tight in his wrists as he bears down. “We can’t go on like this.” Spittle wets his mouth like foam, and he wipes at it, ignoring the trembling in his hands. “I tell you – I tell you how I feel and you leave me. And it was  _so easy_  for you to do that, Scully. So,  _so_ easy for you to just take your things and go. And that’s how it’s been my whole life with every single person I’ve ever met. I am trying  _so hard_ to make this different.”

“I never left you,” she says with such anger it makes his head snap up. “Fuck you. I never left you. I’ve been following you since day one, and me taking the space I need to get my head straight doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned you.”

“You tried,” he says, unearthing resentment he didn’t even know he had. She stood in his apartment and tried to leave him behind to fucking  _Utah_. “You tried to leave me, and now you’re doing it again.”

“I tried to leave because I thought I had no value! And Mulder! You proved it!” Half screech, half laughter, she wrenches the car door open and slams it shut, stomping away from him as he scrambles to follow her. Being in public changes the both of them, and they mask their faces with impassivity, stalking into her apartment building with in-sync steps. “Go home, Mulder,” she says. “Go home now.”

“You are the only thing in my miserable fucking life that has any value, Scully,” he utters, low and secret so that the old women passing them both can’t hear. His body runs hot with his feverish pleas as he tries to follow one line of thinking – don’t let her walk away, don’t let her walk away – and he tries to leave the rest of it behind to depress himself with later. He’s made the only person who’s ever really cared about him feel unworthy. Shit. The least he can do is let her  _know_. Let her feel it. Make it right. “Just let me show you. Let me tell you. I have – I thought about it, with reason, intent, and as objectively as I goddamn could, because I knew you deserved better from me. Please just let me tell you. How much I love you–” his voice breaks as she reaches the elevator and presses the button. “How much I need you, how so very _sorry_  I am to have made you feel any different.”

“First time you told me you loved me, you fucked another woman,” she says with her back to him. “Then the second time you told me, you backed me into a corner and wouldn’t leave me alone to process. I only pray that after this you learn to leave me alone and that this is completely impossible. We are not meant to be. Goodbye, Mulder. I will see you at work on Monday.”

***

She closes her door and slumps against it, knuckles digging into her eyes as she sags with exhaustion. Everything she refused to admit – torn from her heart in a matter of seconds. The exposure doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. The idea of putting her emotions back inside, _I don’t love him, I feel fine, I am happy with where I am in life,_ appears to her a childish act. It is surreal to think she had expected to live with all of that simmering inside of her for much longer. Seeing herself through someone else’s eyes had shown her for what she really was: pathetic. Hung up on things that didn’t matter. Unable to admit the truth even when it’s hovering over her like the rising tide. Like opening the door to a hoarder’s closet, reality spills out of her in filthy heaps as she prepares herself to finally, actually move on. There will be no more staring at herself in the mirror and pretending like she is above the human necessity of grieving. And grieve she does, admitting to an empty room that yes, she does love him, and that it will never be enough for her. She wonders what it is inside herself that makes her so weak for love that wants her blood.


	5. Chapter 5

Only an hour into an uneasy sleep, Scully gasps awake, choking mid-scream and clutching her bruised chest hard enough she feels the bite of her nails clawing in, drawing blood through the silk of her night shirt.   _Imdyingimdyingimdying,_  she’s so sure of it, feeling suffocated by the air she loudly and desperately sucks into her lungs. **  
**

It takes her over five minutes to fully convince herself she’s safe and it takes her thirty to pull herself out of bed. Her eyes fall on her alarm clock; 9:45 p.m.

There’s nothing for her to do. She’s already cleaned her whole apartment. She called her mom and tried for her brothers, but neither of them had been available. Reading makes her physically ill, her eyes chasing word after word until her whole body is winded. The only thing she can think to do is watch T.V., let it take her away and hope that the next sleep won’t try to do her in.

Monday lies ahead of her like a pole to crash into.

_Monday._

Where they’ll force her to sit down with her psychologist and work out all the detailings of this case. Where they’ll determine whether she’s fit for duty – and she  _isn’t_. She knows she’ll have to lie her ass off because she’s equally unprepared to take time off.

All she wants to do for now is just stop thinking. None of her thoughts are kind or productive. The more she lets them build up, the deeper they cut her, and within fifteen minutes of being awake she is so full of anger that it leads her to pace around the living room.

The T.V. remains off. The idea of another night letting the boobtube cocoon her into some kind of false companionship makes her want to rip her own damn heart out. Automoton voices calling through a speaker into a perpetually lonely room as she shovels the same fucking bagged salad concocotion into her mouth every single night – oh, god.

This is her  _life._

No  _wonder_. No  _wonder_  she’d walked straight into that man’s apartment. Sat on his bed. What  _else._  What else would she have done?

All she wants.

All she wants is to stop thinking.

It hits her that she hasn’t eaten all day, and nothing makes her crankier than low blood sugar.

She makes herself a hearty sandwich on whole wheat bread, taking the time to spread the condiments thickly, dole out fresh veggies in an even spread, pack it with the decent deli meat she so rarely gets to eat before it goes bad. No matter how slowly she eats it, she can’t taste a thing. She chokes it all down as a low sob builds in her chest, her thoughts whirling into the walls of her skull with the same brute messages.

How reckless she is, how unforgivably stupid. Unfit. Incompetent.  _Doomed_. Doomed to repeat the same pattern all of her life, trace the circle round and round until she inevitably chokes on her own dumb ass.

Because she’s incapable of letting anything go, of course she’s gotten to the bottom of it. Why she let this all happen. There were so many layers to dig through, so many uncomfortable truths she forced herself to bring to light, but she unearthed them _all,_  starting from the day she realized how good it felt to make Mulder feel  _bad_ – that day he’d accosted her and her mentor in the lab. Had she not taken a secret delight in pulling away from him, knowing it to be a vengeful act?

Going deeper, that wasn’t even the thick of it.  _Yes_ , she wanted Mulder to feel bad. But mostly she wanted to feel  _better,_  to the point of avoiding all reason and logic in order to defend a serial murderer.

Here was someone who noticed her. Here was someone who realized her value, even when she was unable to see it herself. Here was someone who was lonely, like her.

Here was someone who let her know she wasn’t alone.

In her quiet, empty apartment, her mind calls out too loud, angry for having been so casually discarded during this case, perhaps during the last six years. She is as honest with herself as she has been dishonest; honest that she is lonely, that it has  _never_  been by choice, that she has always wanted, wanted, wanted, only to be denied, denied, denied.

When she tries calling her brothers again, nobody picks up – she’d expected that, of course, it’s late and… her mom is asleep by now, surely, but she tries anyway and no, she doesn’t pick up either. And because she’s a glutton for punishment, against her better judgment she tries for Ellen, who might not even have the same number anymore. And there are others who don’t pick up, and then there’s Mulder, and she’s shocked to find that she wants to talk to him so badly it pains her to put the phone down before she can dial.

But there’s always Plan B. Dana Scully always has a Plan B. A half a bottle of wine and her thoughts slow.

Right.

On.

Down.

Just enough to help her make a decision. She decides that she is done being lonely. A spark of confidence glows where hours of brooding had tried to extinguish it, and she finds herself calling a cab.

There’s a bar she used to like that she hasn’t been to in years. It’s time to prove to herself that she’s capable of making connections without the other person taking a piece right out of her. She dresses herself up, puts on a coat of makeup she thinks is mostly straight. In the taxi she can breathe again, forgets the feel of one man’s hands inside her chest cavity, of another man’s hand on the small of her back. At the bar she orders herself a glass of wine.

And doesn’t speak to a single person after.

***

He’s been feeling off ever since he let her go. Guilty. Not only for the accusations she’d levied at him, although those sure didn’t make him feel good about himself. It occurs to him when he’s licking his own wounds doing laps at the pool, trying to pound his stress into the water, that he left her in a pretty bad state. Monstrously bad.

But he is a selfish _prick_ , and it takes him awhile to really listen to his gut. Isn’t that always how it goes? The reason he fails Scully so often is because she is the one thing that doesn’t come to him intuitively. He’d separated her from every other facet of his life this way, never just going with how he felt. He’d thought it was a sign of respect.

He’d thought the distance would keep them safe.

He never could have imagined how isolating that must have felt for her.

He finishes up at the pool, even considers Buffet Night with the Gunmen out at China Star – anything he can do to keep himself in check, avoid from lashing out.

Because he wants to.

There’s something rotten coiling up, the same old feelings he’s always had, that nothing about him is good enough for something even approaching good. As emotionally constipated as it seems, emotionally _incompetent,_  almost downright delusional, the thing that keeps him from going under is her. He still has _hope._  Loving her desperately for this fucking long is enough of a balm to keep him going at least until she murders him.

When he heard her say  _I love you_ , his first thought had been  _we’ll solve this_ , despite knowing how astonishingly selfish that was. He thinks he’d do almost anything to hear it again.

As the sky grows darker, his gut boils.

He doesn’t ever want to assume what’s best for her, and she had asked him to go. But he’s fixated on how easily she broke when pressed for her feelings. It isn’t Scully’s way to even admit she has them. Her resentments poured out of her like he’d turned on a faucet with just one question. She broke.

In front of him.

And he’d left her alone…

It’s well past midnight when it finally hits him what a colossally stupid move that was, and by then he is full on panicking.

It’s a long drive over to Georgetown as he curses himself for not even considering – that she is a victim, that she has been  _stalked_ and _assaulted,_  has had her mind fucked with in ways he can’t even comprehend, and he had left her alone.  _Shit._  Even if this thing between them didn’t exist, it’s a bad move, partner-protocol wise.

He knocks on the door, fully expecting to use his key. He can’t stop seeing her bleeding out on his carpet, or the jarring soprano reach of her cries as she pulled him close and trapped him in.

“Scully?” He knocks again, louder, knowing she’s going to get some complaints from her neighbors and not giving a shit. “Scully, open up,” he says, already scraping his key against the lock.

The door wrenches open before he can get it in.

“Go the  _fuck_  home,” Scully says, so openly hostile it makes him step back. He quickly takes in her appearance and gives her more space, putting a safe distance between them. She’s wearing a dark blue dress – he doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen her in a dress – and her makeup is dark and heavily smudged, like she’d been in the process of wiping it off before he’d arrived. Like she’d raced out of the bathroom midswipe to tell him to fuck off. He has absolutely no clue what’s going on here, but he’s terrified.

“Scully?” He realizes that she hadn’t been wiping her makeup off. She’d been crying. He steps forward.

***

“Now, Mulder.” She puts everything she can into her voice, wanting him to know how sincerely she means it. Wobbling on her heels a little, she rears back to slam the door in his face but his foot catches in between it, and he’s shoving his way in.

“I shouldn’t have left you earlier, Scully. I’m just here to check on you.” He holds his hands out after he shuts the door behind him, and even in her hazy state she knows what he’s doing. Approaching her like he’s trying to talk her into dropping her weapon. This infuriates her even more.

Looking at him makes her so upset she gets lightheaded with it, and she almost loses her balance.

“Do you want me to resign?”

“Do you want to resign?” He tilts his head. One step closer. So close to just… “You were crying,” he whispers, and there it is.

His hand cups her cheek, and her body betrays her in every way. No matter how angry she’s been at Mulder in the past, she never hated him. But she does _now_. She radiates it through every pore of her body, and she just wants him to know. She just wants him to know what a big fucking waste of time this all has been for her.

“I have _nothing,_ ” she slurs, and in the moment she truly believes it. There is nothing of her that exists but her voice shooting out at him. But even that fails her; everything she wants to say falls at her feet. She’s already said everything that matters anyway. Her eyes droop, and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so much pain in her life. Everything hurts. She swoons in his arms as they wrap around her, tight as a drum.

“What do you mean?” He asks, smoothing her hair back. Some of it is stuck in her makeup, in the gummy tracks of tears streaking her face. “What do you mean you have nothing? You know that’s not true, Scully.” His voice is trembling, and his eyes fervently search hers.

“I let –” between laughter and tears, she hiccups it all out, finding it just as funny as she finds it tragic. “I am so _lonely,_ ” she chokes out. “I’m so lonely I let  _Phillip Padgett_ hurt me.”

“No.” He shakes her, and she goes with him like a ragdoll. “No, that is  _not your fault._ You would  _never_ speak that way about anyone else, so don’t you _dare s_ ay that about yourself.”

His proximity sends her senses flying to places she never wanted to reach. Pressed tightly to his chest, she can smell his skin and his detergent, his cologne _, him._  It’s comforting. This is Mulder. She leans into him and lets him hold her as tightly as he wishes. God, how had she ever denied wanting him like this? His body is made to keep her upright, to protect her. She’s never felt so safe.

Her lips brush his neck, followed by her teeth. “You said I was the one leaving you.” She nuzzles his skin, tears flowing even as her tongue sweeps over his pulse. “You left me,” she says, so small.  
  
“Scully.” His fingers dig into her skin deep enough to pinch her. “No I didn’t leave you,” he says, “we can’t – not like this.” He says, “Oh fuck, Scully,” he says, and she’s never heard his voice as deep.

“You did. For her.” She pulls back to see her lipstick smudged on his skin, then rubs it away with her thumb. “Again and again and again.” She smiles, closing her eyes as she succeeds in getting him out of his shirt. But she’s yanked away before she can get a good look, and then his lips are on hers.

It’s soft. Soft enough to lull her into pleasant dreams, to soothe the ache for a sweet moment. Mulder at his most tender. His hands cup her face, thumbs stroking along her cheekbones as he roots for the perfect angle. His breath puffs out through his nose against her face and she hears it, too, as he tries to control it, to slow himself down.

She doesn’t want slow.

Still connected at the lips, she steps out of her heels and he follows her, dipping down to her height. His hands fall from her face to her shoulders, unwilling to go lower. He’s so caught up with making it gentle, making it last, that he doesn’t notice the way she reaches behind her back to fiddle with her zipper until blue silk puddles at their feet. Breaking the kiss and stepping back, she stands before him in her lacy underwear, cream-colored and sparse.

She waits for him to reject her, be the good, honorable man she’s always known him to be. His track record certainly indicates he’ll be racing to his car within seconds. As he panics, her power grows, and she reaches down to pull her dress back up. “I knew it,” she laughs. “Blew your chance.”

He watches, licking his lips as she does up her zipper. “I love you,” he rasps, tongue scraping at his bottom teeth.

She wishes he knew how insulting it is to hear that after the year they’ve had. After the lengths he went to push her away. After getting her hopes up. And that’s – that’s what he’d done. Even if she didn’t know at the time how much she wanted this with him, she thinks he knew, and that makes this all so much worse. “Like a possession, Mulder.” Her voice wobbles, and she hates him all the more for it. “Like a  _tool._ ”

She goes to turn away from him to grab a glass of water, try and sober up a little before she goes to bed. If he stays, if he goes, she doesn’t really care. But he grabs her before she can get very far, seething, the angriest she’s ever seen him. “I am  _done_  with this, Scully,” he hisses at her, dragging her in for another kiss.

_Yes._

He rips her dress back down her body, yanking it hard when it gets caught around her hips. “You don’t get to tell me I don’t love you. I know how I feel. You’re the one who can’t choose.”

“Oh, I know how I feel.” Oh, fuck. His tongue. Over her ribcage, her belly button, lapping over the scar in her belly. He licks her, half-penitent, half-mad as a rabid dog as he fumbles to slip her panties down her legs.

“Betrayed,” she whimpers, threading her fingers through his wild hair. Even when she knew she shouldn’t, she thought about how he’d be at this, watching him go at his straws, seeds, pens, anything he could get in his mouth. Knowing how desperate he always is to prove himself. Knowing how attentive he is to any challenge.

He presses a deep, searing kiss to her slit, then sucks her clit into his mouth. When was the first time she imagined this? Years and years ago. Maybe the first year. Had she wanted him even then?

Has he always  _known?_

She tugs at his hair and pulls his face away from her, eyes shining with angry tears as she repeats herself, choked, “ _Betrayed,”_  and sinks to her knees to join him on the floor. She doesn’t want to risk falling for his kindness, his fucking pity party, let his tongue soothe her into submission.

Her balance is off; she collides into him and they both tumble, sprawling out on the carpet.

They both know what this is.

She is giving up and he is pleading. If she had been looking for the way to hurt him best, she’s found it: refusing to let him love her in any way. His soft touches are made rough when she ruts against his hard, wiry body, making him cling on to her like he might fall off the edge of the world. His kisses are met with bites, her strong, slick tongue, hungry for blood.

Suddenly, his fist tightens in the back of her hair and she moans, her head snapping back when he yanks. “Hey,” he growls, pulling her off of him. “Fucking _slow down_.” She whimpers when he tugs again, harder, her body following in a smooth jerk. He holds her off of him, staring her down as he unbuttons his fly with one hand. He lets her go to slip out of his jeans and his briefs, and with his look alone she’s intimidated. Whatever he is feeling right now by far surpasses her own rage. He looks near demented when he shoves her down on the floor and goes right with her, holding her down by her arms.

Back in his apartment he had loomed over her just like this, unsure if she was alive. This is it, she thinks, sinking under all of his weight. She waits for the sharp points of his teeth, the blunt head of his cock splitting her apart, maybe his hand at her throat.

“I’m sorry,” his voice cracks instead.

It paralyzes her, all save for the thick tears dripping down her cheeks as one hand slowly makes its way down between her breasts. He strokes her bruises, lighter than a feather, and she can’t decide whether she wants to flee or stay just like this. “I’m so sorry.”

He slides off of her when she pushes up on his chest, just like he weighs nothing at all. She’s never felt more rotten, more guilty, more frightened of the future than when she looks at him sitting wide-eyed across from her. She sees her friend and her partner, the man she loves beyond all sense and rationality, and convinces herself she’s ruined everything.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for following along even during the hiatus. There will be one final part to this series, Cauterize, which will be one veeeeeery long piece. Look out for it!

She gives herself instructions in lieu of a proper emotional response. Wrapping her dress around her body like a blanket, she picks up the pieces of Mulder’s clothing and deposits them in his lap, ignoring his dazed look as she disappears behind her bedroom door. She kicks off her shoes and winces when her sore toes dig into the carpet. Dress discarded, she slides her panties back up her legs, keeps her bra on, pulls her pajamas out of the dresser like she would on any other night. If she curls up in her bed, will he leave her be? Will he wait her out on the couch, popping his head over the back of it to stare her down when she emerges in the morning?

No, she closes her eyes and draws in a shaky breath. No. Like a spreading infection, this had to be dealt with now. Before it gets worse, if it even could. She opens the door.

He’s spiky-haired, half dressed, surprised to see her when he looks up from his fly. It reminds her of a starving street cat that used to follow her and Melissa around the base, begging for affection.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She’d wanted to button up her voice and calm them both down. But her lower lip trembles, and no amount of mental focus will rush sobriety through her blood. There’s no fight in her left. It’s been scooped out, dumped on the floor where she’s tried her best to destroy them both.

He drops his shirt and approaches her in a cautious stride, reminding her even more of the poor little cat. Oh, she’s horrible. “Don’t,” she shakes her head, but he’s already pulling her into his arms, shushing her as she sniffles and buries her face in his bare chest.

“Oh, Scully.” He rocks her back and forth, lips brushing her scalp. He repeats her name again and again, soft as a cloud. She can’t believe she ever expected him to leave.

He brings her to her bed and climbs in beside her, and she thinks of all the night that could have ended like this.

“We’ve never talked about our personal lives, but I know enough to know… that you’ve been hurt before. In this way.” She can barely get it out, speaking halfway into her pillow as his arm circles her waist.

“What way?”

 _Through sex._  But she doesn’t say it. Doesn’t want to acknowledge that she knows all about how intimacy is the sharpest weapon against neglected children. Doesn’t want to acknowledge what this all says about her as a person. As a friend. And what a terrible friend she’s been. “I’m sorry,” is all she can say.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I hurt you.”

“I hurt  _you._ ”

“But Mulder,” and how much it pains her to say his name, and to follow it with such an awful admission. “I  _wanted_ to hurt you.”

She had. She had, she had, she had. It hadn’t started that way. It had all began with a sort of dignity, yes, and she had tried to throw herself into the work, had tried to carve a healthy space between them while the tensions ran high. But the person she’s been tonight is so, so far removed from that woman who knew her worth and fought to make others see it.

“I’m a bad influence on you.” When she sighs, he shakes his head and tightens his arms around her, voice thick with emotion. “No, I mean it. That’s just not like you, Scully. That’s me talking. Telling you it’s easier to lash out and push away and… defend, using any means necessary to make yourself impenetrable to kindness, to… pain. To _love_.”

“You say that like I’m a novice to all this myself, Mulder.”

With the lights off she can pretend these are her ordinary confessions, and that she isn’t scared to death of how honest she can’t stop herself from being. His soft voice is the only landmark on a blacked out map, the safe space she’d forgotten she adored, and finally she lets it guide her home as he finds the words to explain away everything. There’s nowhere to escape to as he tells his tale in the dark.

“You were never afraid to love me. You always showed me, and in so many different ways, Dana. It changed me. It made me better. And that terrified me because that meant I had to _be_ better, and I didn’t think I could.”

His hand strokes her face, a slight touch that tickles her cheek, and her nose scrunches under his fingers. He brushes a lock of her hair out of her eyes. She’s still too intoxicated to feel the danger in their closeness, too tired to fight back against the truth _. I loved you the whole time_ , she nods under his palm. _The whole time_. How refreshing it is to be validated by him.

“When you were taken away again… I gave up. The stakes were too high. I was afraid to lose you again… which sounds absurd in retrospect, because they’ve always known the easiest way to get to me was through you. But I decided the last thing you needed was an even bigger target on your back.” He drags his hand down to her shoulder, flattens it along the top of her spine. “ _Implant yet another abduction device here_ ,” he says like a robot. “ _He loves me and he can’t do shit without me._ ”

“That’s not true,” she says, trying to be nice.

“Liar.” Bunching the back of her shirt in his fist, he lets out a wet, disbelieving laugh. “And then I go to Bermuda, hop on a ghost ship, and travel back to 1939. There are nazis trying to kick my ass all over the ship. No one’s heard of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I’m  wearing a Hanes polyester t-shirt. And you’re there, Scully. You’re  _there_.”

“No I wasn’t,” she argues, pleasantly exasperated at his bullshit. She’s enough of an adult to admit that she’s missed it. “I was working with the Gunmen trying to fish you out of the middle of the ocean.”

“But you were, Scully. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. You were on that ship in the middle of the ocean, and you saved the world and you saved me, and I realized…” a shaky, humid sigh in the crook of her neck, and she knows he’s trying to stop himself from crying. “That it didn’t matter where anyone took you, because I’d always find you.”

It’s everything she hadn’t known she needed to hear, even if it’s interwoven through a story of insanity. But one thing cuts her particularly deep, going back to what he’d told her on the same night he dropped his damn condom wrapper in the parking garage. “You were with her again,” she says quietly, making him scoot closer to hear it. “After all of that.”

It takes him a moment to answer as he untangles his thoughts from his guilt and self-doubt. She can feel him thinking as he fidgets against her back. “I know,” he says. “I don’t have an excuse. There is no excuse.”

“But I  _need_ one.” She hates how much it sounds like begging.

“All I can do is promise you I’ll never do it again, and I do. I  _promise._ ” He kisses her neck, a little signature for his vows. “I will never, ever hurt you like that again. I just don’t have it in me, Scully. I can’t put us through this again.”

She’s hesitant, heartbroken when she realizes she still doesn’t quite trust Mulder to love her. He’s gotten as good at convincing her to stay as he is at leaving her behind. However… she also knows he would never lie to her. “Okay,” she says, not exactly sure what she’s agreeing to. But whatever it is, it makes him cuddle her so close it pains her to breathe; he becomes big soft bear trap of a man.

All of her relentless, lonely thoughts turn to mush at the feeling of his penitent nose brushing against her cheek. It breaks her to be loved like this, down to the very atom. It will take her awhile to get past the discomfort. The threat of all the difficult work they have ahead of them chills her through his molten lava body heat, and she still can’t help but believe what she told him this morning: this is impossible, and they are not meant to be. But he’s been so brave, finally letting himself love her. Perhaps it’s her turn to face her biggest fear—letting herself be loved by him.

“You have to go before I wake up,” she warns him, rolling over in his embrace. “It’ll only be harder if you don’t.” The meaning is clear:  _we’re doing this at my pace_. And when Mulder picks up on that and chooses not to fight her, she feels a little less afraid.

“I guess I can live with that. Only if you promise to come down to the basement a little more often. It gets lonely down there, Scully. Even the roaches hate me.”

“Maybe they don’t hate you,” she says. “Maybe they just need a little time to gather their thoughts on the matter, and it will all soon explode in a violent maelstrom of sexual tension.”

“Oh, I hope so.”

They laugh together and let sleep drag them under. They begin to let go.


End file.
